The South Pacific to lose more short wave radio access as the ABC prepares to end AM transmission there!

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has decided to end all its AM transmissions throughout the South Pacific on the 31st of January. For those of you who don’t already know, the ABC is the Australian equivalent of our own RNZ. You may have already read the piece that I wrote last year expressing the concerns people have about Radio New Zealand’s AM transmission being reduced in the South Pacific due to a lack of money to replace their broken down AM transmitter. This meant that they went from two transmitters broadcasting over the South Pacific down to just one and that transmitter doesn’t always provide any AM broadcasts to the communities where that is the only kind of radio signal that is available to them. The link to the piece I wrote is here .

Radio New Zealand could fully restore its AM transmission to the South Pacific back to what is was before the transmitter got too old to work, if only it had the funding levels to do it. This year the funding freeze turns 9, we should throw it a birthday party with an ice theme! The fight to unfreeze RNZ’s funding continues. Watch this space!

If you would like to donate to the campaign to Fund RNZ you can do so here and there is also a petition to increase funding for Radio New Zealand here and another petition regarding the ABC withdrawing its AM transmission from the South Pacific here . Also, if you’re on Twitter, the hashtag is #FundRNZ.

UPDATE 6/1/17 at 5:49pm – If you have any friends or family in Australia, consider letting them know about the ABC petition.